


Salt And The Sea

by kittybenzedrine



Series: Timelines [57]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Forced Marriage, Gen, Genie Rules, Gods & Goddesses, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Near Death Experiences, ship wreck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: A sea goddess offers a drowning sailor a second chance at life, but there's always a price to pay._____All pieces of the Timelines series are standalones and can be read without context.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Timelines [57]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/728796
Kudos: 10





	Salt And The Sea

The goddess cradles the mortal's face in her hands, smiling at him with her rows of shark teeth. He's truly beautiful. She's more than content to let his crewmates drown as their ship wrecks during a nasty storm, but this particular human catches her eye. 

He's a fighter, for one. She watches as he tries in vain to make it back to the surface, swimming with all his might despite the sea churning and sucking him downward. The man is built like the people of the sea. His arms are thick and strong, even as they go limp with exhaustion. Broad, built for the water even if he doesn't know it. Pupils that constrict properly in the water for optimal sight... though they're blank with death by the time she's got her hands on him.

It also doesn't hurt that he's pretty. The goddess likes pretty humans, and he's fairly handsome even in death. Even with his lips pale blue, his eyes void of any trace of a soul, he's so dreadfully beautiful.

The goddess holds him and gives him one of her many Blessings. No water in his lungs, but no need for air. No need for anything, really, not while he's suspended in this place between life and death. She keeps the two of them in place with gentle swishes of her tail, waiting until clarity returns to his warm brown eyes.

"Do you want to live?" she asks softly, gently stroking a talon across his cheekbone. 

The human is wide-eyed, lips parted in surprise. Even dulled by the water, she can still smell his sudden, sharp spike of fear. He doesn't seem like a man that's accustomed to feeling something like fear. The goddess knows she's a frightening sight to mortals, and she relishes in the scent as she repeats her question.

A moment passes, and he nods into her palms.

"Good. Now, make me an offer and I'll tell you if it's a price I'll accept."

His brows pinch together. "I... have nothing to give you."

"Oh sweet thing." She brings her face in close to his, the smile never leaving her lips. "There's always something to offer."

The goddess has made deals like this before. She often gets the same offers. A firstborn child, money, jewelry or adornments, fairly useless things. Mortals are uncreative and materialistic, offering up what they enjoy the most in the hopes that the goddess will like it too. That, and they read too many storybooks. Humans hardly ever offered children before that particular religion became popular.

Human currency has no bearing on her life and is ultimately useless. The coin are fairly pretty, sure, but the paper currency eventually disintegrates in the sea and the coins either tarnish or rust.

Most gifts are lovely. Heirloom jewelry, fine combs, little intricate things. Lovely as they are, they still rust or rot away due to the brine of the sea and are similarly useless, though they're pretty while they're intact.

The little ones that are offered, well. She doesn't like children, but if the parent's first instinct is to offer up a child that doesn't exist yet, then the goddess doesn't find them deserving of keeping the little ones. The human babies are given a different Blessing and grow tails and gills, and are bestowed to sea folk who desire little ones but can't have them.

She wonders what this human will offer her. Some of the sunken cargo, perhaps? It's hers now regardless, it's fully in her domain and too far down for any human to ever hope to reach. Currency? He seems the type to offer money. Oh, or maybe he'll offer something different like a painting? Several paintings went down with the ship, and there's paint under his nails and stuck to his fingers. A portrait would be nice. No one has painted her in _ages_.

The goddess is eager to find out, but the human remains mute in her hands.

"You're running out of time~" she sing-songs at him, tightening the grip on his face.

His brows furrow once more, and those lovely brown eyes of his search over her face. The scent of fear spikes, but it's gone almost as quickly.

"Devotion," he offers finally, and the goddess blinks in surprise. "I'll give you devotion."

Well then. She's never had an offer like that before. It's creative, she'll give him that. Creative _and_ enticing. Devotion? Simply an offer of devotion? This sweet, stupid mortal. Just like the other humans, he hasn't thought to add any stipulations to his little offering, no buffers or rules to abide by. She may not be a trickster, but she knows how she wants this to go. _Devotion_. Oh, it's been too long. She's positively giddy.

"You'll devote yourself to me?"

Once more, the human nods in her grip.

"Oh darling," the goddess says softly, letting the fingers of her right hand roam his face. His bottom lip is desperately soft beneath her thumb. "It's been so long since a human worshiped me. I accept your offering."

Leo lays awake in the healer's hut, staring up at the darkened ceiling. Some of his deceased crew members have washed up on this little nowhere island over the course of the day, but most of the men are unaccounted for and all of them are undoubtedly dead. He washed up earlier this afternoon, sunburned and half-dead himself. The rest of the crew fared much worse than him, drowning horribly in the stormy wreck overnight.

There's a sense of guilt there, if he's even capable of feeling something like that. Leo is- _was_ \- the captain of the vessel. When the ship goes down, the captain goes with it. Yet here he is, laying in a comfortable bed while fish feast on the corpses of his waterlogged crew. Maybe it's fate. Perhaps he's lucky to have survived in spite of everything. It was a vicious wreck after all, and he's the only one of nearly a hundred to remain alive. 

Sitting up, Leo stares out the small window next to his cot. He shouldn't be alive. Leo very distinctly recalls being tossed into the sea with the rest of his men, being sucked down into the stormy brine while air left his lungs and water filled in its place. He tried so hard to make it to the surface, but the current was simply too strong. He remembers drowning, and he remembers the agony of the saltwater as his vision finally, mercifully began to go black.

He remembers coming to with his face being cradled in two claw-tipped hands. No need to breathe, no pain of salt in his lungs or eyes. Just a mermaid- no, a _siren_ , holding him close and smiling with a mouthful of sharp shark teeth. Two deep sea green eyes, long tendrils of brown, possibly black hair, and that serene smile with too many goddamn teeth.

Perhaps the siren isn't a dream like he believes. Perhaps the beautiful, terrifying shark woman with a tail and too many teeth is real. Perhaps the siren really did bring him back to life, and perhaps he really made the offer to worship her, and perhaps-

Perhaps he drank seawater while he was out of it.

Leo runs his hands down his face, feeling the phantom touch of the siren's talons on his lips. That's exactly it. He drank sea water, he's delirious with sun sickness, and the grief he's kind-of-sort-of-not-really feeling is driving him mad. Sirens aren't real and he's off his fucking rocker.

_____

The next afternoon, Leo feels like he's been trampled by a horse. The healer expects it and tells him to take it easy, but to move around and walk if he can handle it. He's lucky to come out of this with nothing but scrapes and bruises, apparently, and she doesn't want him laying about and letting his muscles grow weak. Thus, he leaves her hut to explore the little seaside village.

He paces the sandy paths, not meeting eyes with the villagers. He doesn't want the pitying looks, and he most certainly doesn't want to answer any questions. Tucking his hands into the pockets of his breeches, Leo watches the horizon and quietly says a prayer for his drowned brothers. It's the least he can do.

Pieces of his ship continue to wash up as the afternoon wears on. Leo sits out on the docks though the sun irritates his reddened skin, watching the broken boards and sails of _Dame de Chagrin_ stick in the sand, only to be scooped up by children and adults. The adults take the waterlogged boards to dry and use for their fires, and many of the children have banded together to build a rather impressive play fortress. Eventually, he can't stand the heat any longer and rises.

The villagers begin to quiet as he slowly makes his way back to the healer's hut. The exhaustion weighing at his frame distracts him from it, but the lack of human sound gets to him. There's silence, then whispers. It's not whispers like he expects, filled with sympathy or hushed questions. No sorrowful murmurs of the crew's deaths or women worrying over his sunburns and scrapes. These whispers are full of nervous tension and fear.

"He made a deal with her," he catches from his left, hearing the woman's voice constrict with fear.

"She ain't been seen on land since my Pa was a wee lad," another says, his tone grave. 

'Made a deal with her'? He never spoke of the siren he dreamed of, he knows this, he was conscious when they first pulled him out of the sand. The healer doesn't seem like the gossipy type, either. So even if he was spouting nonsense in his sleep, she wouldn't have told. Giving a quick glance around, he finds that the villagers aren't looking at him, but rather towards the docks. 

Leo turns, and a chill runs down his spine.

The woman coming down the path is beautiful. Her brown curls are long and damp, coiling tighter as they continue to dry. Shapely, that's for sure, and dressed in a loose dress that the women here seem to favor. Soft features, plush lips. Eyes as green as the sea, he notes, as she gets close enough to touch his face.

"Leonce," the siren coos, stroking a soft hand across his cheek. "You're awake."

His mouth goes dry, and he looks down at the siren. She's- it's undoubtedly her, even on two legs. Her fingers shift to comb through his hair, brushing the long strands back behind his ear.

"I'm glad to see you made it to shore, Leonce. I truly mean it."

"I-" his voice falters. "I never gave you my name."

"Oh darling, you didn't have to. I know everything there is to know about you."

He's gone mad. The ship wrecked and he listened to the siren's song without ever knowing it, and he's gone completely fucking _mad_.

"Are you well?" she asks, her teeth gleaming in the sunlight. "You've gone pale under that sunburn."

It takes two tries to get any words out. "I spoke nothing of myself."

 _"But I know it_. You're a native of the Americas, but you bear a French given name and a Slavic surname. How odd. Hm. You're a widow. You were orphaned at three, poor thing. You're thirty, too, not quite a spry chicken anymore, are you?"

Once more, he tries and fails to speak. The siren continues without a care, spilling his life for the villagers to hear.

"The _Dame de Chagrin_ was on the course back to what _you_ consider your homeland, carrying various loots and spices for the king of that land. Regardless," and she smiles wider, bearing the mouthful of too many sharp teeth, "you know nothing of me. How about we start with my name? You may call me Renee. I think it fits with your given name."

Leo swallows, eyeing the siren. He takes a breath to steady himself. He's already shown this creature too much weakness. "May I ask why you've sought me out?"

Up on her toes, she leans in close to him. "You promised me devotion," Renee murmurs against the shell of his ear, and he can feel the smile on her face as she continues. "And you've a lifetime to prove it, I've made sure of that. And what better way to do that than as your wife?"

The villagers are deathly silent as they watch the two, and Leo wishes someone would do something, speak, shout, cough, _something_. Break the intensity of the moment.

"My... wife."

"Of course." She steps back, that soft, serene smile still gracing her lips. "Marriage is one of the truest forms of devotion, and it's a high honor for you to be my husband."

Wetting his lips, he remains quiet for a moment. "Ah," he settles on. "When I offered devotion, I meant more in the sense of worship-"

"But you didn't clarify that." Her eyes, while beautiful, have something deadly behind them. "You gave no stipulations or clarifications, so we're going by my rules, Leonce."

"... Ah."

"You will devote yourself to me, Leonce. You will provide for me as a husband should, build me a home and take care of me. You will worship my body like a temple in the evenings when the sun goes down. You will be, above all, faithful to me." Her thumb strokes his chin, and he feels the phantom touch of a claw. "You don't want to raise the ire of an old sea goddess, now do you?"

A cold tinge runs down his spine once more, and the siren- the _goddess_ grins. "Rest tonight, dear husband, because your work begins tomorrow."

**Author's Note:**

> Two days worth of word vomit because I'm desperate to write but being an essential worker is leaving me an anxiety-riddled, depressed wreck with no time or inspiration *fingerguns*
> 
> Feel free to comment or hit me with that sweet, sweet Kudos button. I always appreciate it.
> 
> I have [my blog](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if you'd like to check that out, though it's mostly unrelated content. I'm not active much on there, but I'll try to get back to you if you'd rather contact me there.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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